Grace looked at him, but did not speak.
"You understand, Grace, that, not knowing this, they might put their own construction upon our flight.
"To speak plainly, my child, you are a young woman, and I am a young man. Your beauty, dear Grace, offers an explanation of our companionship that the world will accept more readily than any other, and the truth to many would seem scarcely as natural. For this reason it must not be told. I will go back alone with relief, and leave you here in some safe hands until I return. But I leave you here not as Grace Conroy—you shall take my own name!"
A hot flush mounted to Grace's throat and cheek, and for an instant, with parted lips, she hung breathless upon his next word. He continued quietly—
"You shall be my sister—Grace Ashley."
The blood fell from her cheek, her eyelids dropped, and she buried her face in her hands. Philip waited patiently for her reply. When she lifted her face again, it was quiet and calm—there was even a slight flush of proud colour in her cheek as she met his gaze, and with the faintest curl of her upper lip said—
"You are right!"
At the same moment there was a sudden breaking of light and warmth and sunshine over their heads; the tree swiftly swung round a sharp curve in the river, and then drifted slowly into a broad, overflowed valley, sparkling with the emerald of gently sloping hillsides, and dazzling with the glow of the noonday sun. And beyond, from a cluster of willows scarcely a mile away, the smoke of a cabin chimney curled in the still air.